People's Democracy

(Weekly
Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)

Vol.
XXVIII

No. 35

August 29,
2004

RSS And The Gandhi
Murder

Badri
Raina

ONE
repetitive cliché of ‘centrist’ opinion is that Left-wingers and
Right-wingers are, at bottom, blood brothers. Although this is a subject for
detailed scrutiny, just two points may quickly be made, since these relate
intimately to the concerns of the present article. One, that whereas Left-wing
politics seeks consistently to expand and enrich democracy, Right-wing politics
invariably seeks to restrict the grounds of legitimacy. Secondly, and one speaks
here of the modern Indian experience, whereas Indian revolutionaries have always
owned up to their deeds, Indian fascists, led by the RSS, have invariably taken
recourse to subterfuge and denial in matters wherein their role brings them
widespread disgrace.

Of
the latter, the circumstances of Bapu’s murder provide the most telling
instance.The denial of the RSS
here is particularly mean, being often a suitably calibrated one.

NATHURAM
GODSE’S RSS CONNECTIONS

Not
even in this day and age does the RSS deny that Gandhi was not one of its
favourite people. As to Nathuram Godse its denial of his membership of the RSS
was staunch till Curran (1950-51) revealed that fact in his otherwise
sympathetic book; this despite the fact that Godse had himself said in his trial
that “I have worked for several years in the RSS.” The current posture of
the RSS is that Godse had given up his membership long before the Gandhi murder.

The
point is, where are the records?What
we do know is from Gopal Godse, Nathuram’s co-convicted brother. Speaking of
his brothers’ last moments before the hanging, Gopal Godse avers: on reaching
the platform he cited a verse of devotion to the Motherland; the verse in
question was as follows:

Namaste
sadaa vatsale matribhume

Tvya
hindubhume sukhamvardite hum,

Mahamangle
puney bhume tvdharthe

Patitvesh
kaayaa namaste namaste.

Des
Raj Goyal, a one-time swayamsevak, tells us in his book, RSS
(1979) that the above comprises the opening verse of the RSS prayer sung in
every shakha. Goyal then provides two all-important facts bearing on this
prayer: one, that “outsiders are not acquainted with it”; and, two, that at
the time of Godse’s acknowledged membership of the RSS (1930-34) “this
prayer was not sung even in the RSS” and that “the Sanskrit prayer, of which
this verse forms a part, was adopted only in 1940” (Goyal, 142). How then did
Nathuram recite the above prayer as a sort of epitaph to his despicable life? In
fact, the clinching evidence of Nathuram’s membership of the RSS has also come
from Gopal Godse, his brother in his book Why
I Assassinated Mahatma Gandhi (1993) wherein he says unambiguously: “He
(Nathuram) has said in his statement that he left the RSS. He said it because
Golwalker and the RSS were in a lot of trouble after the murder of Gandhi. But
he did not leave the RSS.”In the same book he also characterises
Advani’s denial of Nathuram’s membership of the RSS at the time of the
murder as “cowardice.”

Consider
the further detail supplied by Pyarelal in his biography of the Mahatma (The Last Phase, 756): “A letter which
Sardar Patel received after the assassination from a young man, who according to
his own statement had been gulled into joining the RSS organisation but was
later disillusioned, described how members of the RSS at some places had been
instructed beforehand to tune in their radio sets on the fateful Friday
for the ‘good news.’ After the news sweets were distributed in RSS circles
at several places, including Delhi.”

Obvious
question: if the RSS had nothing to do with the event of that evil Friday how
does one explain what is said in the cited letter?

CIRCUMSTANTIAL
EVIDENCE

If
all that is not ‘evidence’ what were the circumstances of the moment?

The
RSS relies heavily on Patel’s letter of February 27, 1948 in which he
intimates Nehru that the RSS was not involved; rather, it was an extremist wing
of the Hindu Mahasabha. But what did Patel have to say to two other people—S P
Mukerjee and “Brother Sri Golwalker”?To
the former he wrote (letter dated. July 18,’1948):

“As
regards the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, the case relating to Gandhi Ji’s
murder is sub judice and I should not like to say anything about the
participation of the two organisations, but our reports do confirm that, as a result of the activities of these two
bodies, particularly the former, an atmosphere was created in the country in
which such a ghastly tragedy became possible….The activities of the RSS
constituted a clear threat to the existence of government and the state….Indeed,
as time has marched on, the RSS circles are becoming more defiant and are
indulging in their subversive activities
in an increasing measure.”

In
writing to “Brother Sri Golwalker” on Sept 11,’1948 Patel, while
acknowledging that “the RSS did service to the Hindu Society,” laments that
the “objectionable part arose when they. . . began attacking Mussalmans”
(referring toRSS workers). More
explicitly:

“All
their speeches were full of communal poison. . . As a result of the poison, the
country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji…In
fact opposition (to the RSS) grew. . . when
the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji’s death.”

GODSE/SAVARKAR

CONNECTION

What
of the Godse/Savarkar connection? First, let us recall what Curran tells
us—that Savarkar did not leave the RSS because he thought it was deviating
from the mainlines of Hindu/fascist ideology; Curran writes of Hedgewar’s tour
in Maharashtra in 1932: “One of his
advisers on this tour was Nathuram Godse…Godse had joined the RSS in 1930
winning prominence as a speaker and organiser; he left the Sangh in 1934 because
Hedgewar refused to make the RSS a political organisation”(Curran, Militant Hinduism, 18-19).

Making
too much of the separation between the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, therefore,
can only be a technical nicety. Infact we know that Savarkar’s brother, Babu
Rao Savarkar, had merged his Tarun Hindu
Mahasabha with the RSS.

Enough
is known about Savarkar’s role in the murder. Digambar Badge, the approver in
the trial of 1949 (Red Fort) before Justice Atma Charan, was to refer to the
meeting at Savarkar’s home on January 17, ’1948 where the latter was to say
to the conspirators “Yashasvi houn ya”
ergo “Be successful and come back.”

And
the Justice Jivan Lal Kapur Commission which revisited the Gandhi murder in
1966, although again obliged to exonerate Savarkar for want of corroborative
evidence in support of the approver’s confession, was, like Galileo at the
stake, obliged nonetheless to remark that the facts taken together were “destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by
Savarkar and his group”(which included Godse). And when Patel refers to
the role of the “fanatical wing of the Hindu Mahsabha” in his letter to
Nehru (February 27,’1948) without mentioning Savarkar, we know what he was
talking about.

The
point is, look where you will and the differentiations sought to be made between
the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS in the context of the Gandhi murder are no more
than self-serving sleights-of-hand. Gandhi’s elimination was clearly perceived
as a ‘nationalist’ requirement by the combined Hindu/Fascist camp. The bone
of contention between this camp and the Congress movement led by Gandhi
comprised conceptualising the defining features of Independent India.The Mahasabha/RSS view was nowhere more identical than in this. One only
has to read how Savarkar (1938, Nagpur session) and Golwalker (in We,
Our Nationhood Defined, 1938) spoke to this issue.

Savarkar:
“The original political sin, which our
Hindu Congressites. . . committed at the beginning of the Indian National
Congress movement and are persistingly committing still of running after the
mirage of aterritorial Indian
Nation and ofseeking to kill. . . the lifegrowth of an organic Hindu Nation. . . . We
Hindus are a Nation by ourselves because religious, racial, cultural, and
historical affinities bind us intimately into a homogenous nation”.

Golwalker:
“The idea was spread that for the first
time the people were going to live a national life, the Nation in the land
naturally was composed of all those who happened to reside therein and that all
these people were to unite on a common ‘National’ platform and win back
‘freedom’ by ‘Constitutional means.’ Wrong
notions of democracy strengthened the view and we began to class ourselves with
our old invaders and foes under the outlandish name—Indian—and tried to win
them over to join hands with us in our struggle. The result of this poison is
well known….with our own hands are undermining true Nationality.”

Again:
“All those not belonging to the
national, i.e, Hindu race, religion, culture and language, naturally fall out of
the pale of real ‘National’ life. We repeat: in Hindusthan, the land of the
Hindus, lives and should live the Hindu Nation—satisfying all the five
essential requirements of the scientific nation concept of the modern world.”

Thus
all the way from Savarkar, through Golwalker, Deoras and the current day
‘cultural nationalists’ the Nation is conceived of not as a bounded
territory but as a racial/religious construct. Gandhi’s fault it was that he
said any ‘swaraj will be incomplete without Hindu-Muslim unity.” He paid the
price.